CHAPTER SIX — Death Doesn't Ask Permission
Elara
Death didn't arrive loudly.
It didn't burst through the door or announce itself with drama. It came quietly, slipping into our home like it belonged there, like it had been invited.
Death does not ask permission.
It doesn't knock. It doesn't wait for a pause in conversation or for the room to be ready. It doesn't care how carefully a life has been built, how many promises are still open-ended, how much love remains unfinished. It arrives when it chooses, indifferent to schedules, blind to fairness.
My father had plans that day. That was the cruelest part. He wasn't at the end of anything. He was in the middle. In the middle of work deadlines and family dinners and promises he hadn't yet fulfilled. In the middle of a life that still expected him.
Death did not consult those plans.
It didn't ask if he had said everything he meant to say. It didn't ask if we were ready to hear silence where his voice had always been. It didn't ask my mother if she could survive waking up without him beside her. It didn't ask my brothers if they were old enough to lose the man who steadied them.
It didn't ask me.
That morning, I had watched him move through the house like he always did—confident, grounded, entirely present. Nothing in his face warned me. Nothing in his voice suggested urgency. He was alive in all the ways that mattered. Breathing easily. Speaking calmly. Existing fully.
Death does not announce itself in advance.
It doesn't send signs you can recognize in time. It doesn't whisper prepare yourself. It lets you believe in tomorrow right up until there isn't one.
When the sound hit the floor upstairs, my body reacted before my mind understood. That was how death worked too—it bypassed logic, went straight for instinct. Fear arrived whole, unfiltered, already certain something irreversible had begun.
I didn't think this is it.
I thought this is wrong.
And wrong things can be fixed.
That's what I believed then—that if I moved fast enough, spoke loudly enough, held him tightly enough, I could argue with what was happening. That I could interrupt it. That death was something that could be reasoned with if you showed enough desperation.
I learned quickly how wrong that was.
My father tried to speak, and his body betrayed him. That, too, was permission death never asked—to turn a strong man fragile in seconds, to strip him of language, to reduce everything he was into shallow breaths and weakening grip.
I kept talking because silence felt like surrender.
I told him I was there. I told him to stay. I told him we needed him. I said his name like it was a command, like it could anchor him to the floor, to us, to life itself.
Death did not listen.
It never does.
The paramedics moved with urgency, but urgency is still slower than death when it has already decided. Their hands were practiced. Their voices were steady. They did not panic the way we did. They had seen this before. They knew something we didn't yet understand.
Hope existed only because we refused to let it go.
In the ambulance, I watched the machines do what my hands could not. I counted breaths. I memorized his face. I tried to hold onto the version of him that still felt warm, still felt reachable.
I didn't realize I was already saying goodbye.
Death does not pause for realization.
At the hospital,
When we arrived, they took him from us immediately.
We were left in a hallway that smelled like disinfectant and fear.
Time fractured there.
I don't know how long we waited. Long enough for hope to turn brittle. Long enough for my brothers' shock to melt into quiet sobs.
A doctor finally approached us.
Heart attack.
Massive.
Sudden.
time became meaningless. Clocks stopped behaving like clocks. Minutes stretched until they were unbearable, then collapsed into nothing. Waiting became its own kind of suffering—a space where hope and dread circled each other endlessly, neither winning, neither leaving.
I thought death would be loud when it finished.
I thought it would feel definitive in some dramatic way.
Instead, it arrived in a sentence spoken softly by a stranger.
"I'm sorry."
Two words. No explanation required. No room for negotiation.
Death does not justify itself.
It doesn't explain why this heart, this moment, this family. It doesn't offer reasons that make sense or endings that feel earned. It leaves you standing in a hallway that smells like disinfectant and loss, trying to understand how the world is still functioning when yours has just stopped.
They did everything they could.
My mother crumpled. Her grief was loud, uncontained, a sound that scraped through me and lodged deep in my chest.
When they let us see him, he looked like himself and not himself at the same time. Familiar features, unfamiliar stillness. A body that resembled my father without containing him.
Death takes presence first.
I waited for something to change. For a breath. For a twitch. For proof that this was temporary. I kept waiting because accepting felt like agreeing, and I was not ready to agree.
But death does not require acceptance.
It doesn't wait for understanding or permission or peace. It does not care whether you are ready to live with its consequences.
It simply leaves.
And you are the one left behind, holding the weight of everything that was never finished.
My father had promised to come home that night. He had promised dinner. Promised time. Promised continuity.
Death broke every promise without making a single one of its own.
That is what it does.
It arrives uninvited. It takes what it wants. And it leaves you to rebuild a life that no longer recognizes itself.
Death does not ask permission.
It never has.
And it never will
The days that followed were hollow.
People came with food and condolences, their voices soft, their eyes already drifting away as if grief were something to be endured briefly before returning to normal life.
The house felt wrong without him. Too quiet. Too empty.
My mother barely spoke. She moved through rooms like a ghost, touching things he had touched, pausing in doorways as if expecting him to appear.
My brothers didn't ask questions.
They watched me.
So I stood up.
I made calls. Signed papers. Learned words I never wanted to know. Death certificates. Accounts. Forms that reduced a life to ink and signatures.
At night, I lay awake listening for footsteps that never came.
I pressed my hand against the wall of the living room, against the place where he had fallen, even though the carpet had been cleaned, the furniture rearranged.
No trace left behind.
Death didn't ask permission.
It never does.